


A Root in the Earth

by attic_gremlin



Series: Four Weeks of Four 2020 [3]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Groundedness, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), LinkedUniverse, Memories, Purple Prose, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25553962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attic_gremlin/pseuds/attic_gremlin
Summary: Vio is intelligent and strategic-- but that doesn't mean he's a robot. Vio reflects on the memories he holds, and the ones he's making now.
Relationships: Blue Link & Green Link & Red Link & Shadow Link & Vio Link, Shadow Link & Vio Link
Series: Four Weeks of Four 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840435
Comments: 12
Kudos: 102





	A Root in the Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Fwof week 3! I wanted to explore Vio's more emotional side (since I know he has one!! he's not all brains & strategy) and also his association with the earth element and feeling grounded. Also, one of the challenges this week was purple prose (unneccesarily wordy and poetic prose, in which very little happens), so I kinda went crazy! My usual style is pretty purple already, but I just let it flow, all the way to 1650 words exactly! 
> 
> Warnings for brief mentions of dissociation and a sort of floaty dissociative feel to the prose until the last scene.

A lazy stillness floated in the humid air, loosening the tension in the hearts and minds of the nine sleeping heroes gathered around a crackling hearth; embers from the fire floated through the air like will o’ the wisps, flitting about with the same whimsy as did fairies in a fountain. Despite the sleepiness permeating the scene, however, the smallest of their number sat wide awake, watching the breasts of his nine companions rise and fall gently with each breath. Each one of them, he knew, held a firm grip on his heart that, while placed there unintentionally, would not be easily relinquished; in short, he’d grown attached. 

Despite the haze in the air and the sound of slow, sleepy breathing permeating the clearing, as he gazed around the circle at his eight companions Four felt present and real in a way he hadn’t for months; not since he’d returned from his third adventure and Dot had welcomed him home, her arms and heart open and waiting. During that quest, he had often felt light, as if he could float away at any moment. He’d felt airy and detached from everything-- it was as if he’d set his body to a task which could be carried out without his conscious input. With two adventures under his belt already, saving the kingdom was as natural to him as blacksmithing: slaying monsters was as easy as breathing, and puzzles were only a matter of memory. But, when he’d finally found Dot, and rushed into her waiting arms-- her _real_ , flesh-and-blood arms; not stone or crystal but _Hylian_ \--everything around him became solid again: the ground beneath his feet rushed up to meet him, and his lungs drew in enough air to make them ache; a fire was sparked in his heart, shooting joy through every vein like fireworks, joy unlike anything he’d felt in months; the pure elation at seeing her _safe_ pulled tears to his eyes and a sob from his throat. To finally touch her again, after months of uncertainty, of not knowing if she was alive or dead, of fighting tooth and nail to save her-- it was like coming back to life. It hadn’t been over yet, but she had finally been _found,_ and he’d missed her like he would miss a part of himself, so ingrained in his life was she; she had been there since time immemorial. She was there when he’d first scraped his knee, when he’d first seen a Picori (or Minish, as he now knew they were called), and when he’d finally been deemed old enough to start in the forge. She had been by his side when he first laid eyes on what would become the Four Sword, had urged him to draw it even as she was whisked away at the hands of Vaati. She had laughed with him for his joys and cried with him for his sorrows. Seeing her again had grounded him in a way he had thought impossible, had sealed his four disparate parts together in a harmony they hadn’t experienced since before their first split. The four of them agreed on very little, but not one among them could claim he hadn’t missed Dot with his entire being. Finally, after months of feeling like a wisp of a person, he had felt solid and real again.

Right now, just as he had that day, he felt real. The ground he sat on was firm and unshakeable beneath him; the thick, humid air smelled of the campfire when he breathed it in; joy warmed his heart at the sight of his companions, safe and relaxed beside him. He felt pleasantly heavy, almost too heavy for his small body, pulled to the earth by the force of his contentment alone; gravity was nothing compared to the admiration grounding him to the earth beneath his feet, the love swelling his heart to bursting, the sense of belonging filling his aching lungs, the urge to _care, defend, protect,_ roaring in him with all the force of a raging hurricane. 

He felt a light pressure between his temples and smiled. He supposed he could let the boys out for a while; it had been a few days since the last time he’d split.

Quietly, carefully, he crept over his slumbering companions and into the woods in order to let the trees block the flash of light from the split. He hefted his sword above his head and felt the seams of his very being begin to bend and stretch. Further and further apart he was pulled until finally, he snapped; the four parts of himself tumbled apart, torn from one another and granted individual consciousness. 

Vio had stumbled backward upon their split, landing on his back, and now lay prone in the grass. His vision was overcome by that familiar blur that came upon both splitting and waking, and he squinted to clear it. By doing so, he inadvertently peered through the thick canopy above him and glimpsed the night sky, bursting with tiny pinpricks of light which banished the darkness around them as they burned and flickered with vitality. His breath was stolen from him by the majesty he witnessed through the foliage, and he couldn’t bring himself to stand and deprive himself of the incredible sight before him. He had seen night skies before, it was true, but each time he saw those miraculous lights blazing in the sky, despite the hundreds of thousands of miles between them and he, it felt as though it was the very first time he had laid eyes upon them. 

Laying like this, his entire being pressed to the earth, Vio’s senses were expanded almost beyond the limits of his imagination-- he sensed every tiny movement around him; he felt his brothers as they moved about the clearing, heard their footsteps ringing through the earth, soaked up the vibrations of each footfall around him. A minish hid in the grass across the clearing, peering out between blades of grass; back at camp, Sky shifted in his sleep. Vio could hear a low hum from deep within the earth, the sound of the very continents themselves shifting ever so slowly apart. 

The sheer vastness of the universe seemed to overwhelm him, pressing down on his minuscule existence with the weight of a thousand burning stars. He could feel every atom and molecule in his body, blazing just as those lights above him did, rocketing through space with the movement of the planet upon which he lay. He felt that planet fly through space around their sun, and he felt the sun soaring, too, plummetting through a vacuum around the center of their galaxy; burning, falling, _flying_ through space around the very center of the universe. He felt motion all around him, and within him, too; he felt his body pinned to the surface of the tiny world upon which he lay by the force of gravity alone, and he marveled at the infinite tiny details that had come together to make it all happen. It was all so, so much, and the hum grew louder and louder--

Vio sat up, and everything suddenly stopped. The hum cut off abruptly. His brothers footsteps faded, no longer a thunderous roar in his ears, but once again simply the soft crunch of boots on grass. He couldn’t sense the minish, or Sky, or the motion of the earth anymore-- everything was silent. And yet, the feeling at the core of it all remained: he felt solid. Gazing down at his calloused, scarred, hands, he felt real. In that moment, his past didn’t feel like a fairy tale, as it so often did; it felt like part of him. He remembered each and every moment of his life; he remembered the heat of the forge on the first day of his apprenticeship, and the chill in the air during the Picori Festival, and the sweat on his brow as he scaled Mt. Crenel. He remembered the weight of a hammer in his palms when he smithed, and the weight of his guilt in his stomach when he’d betrayed his brothers. He remembered laughing until his sides ached with Shadow, and then crying himself to sleep in Ganon’s dark palace once he no longer had Shadow to distract him from the roiling ( _unreasonable, unnecessary, useless)_ emotions swirling in his mind.

And just as real as those memories were the things around him now-- the grass tickling his legs, the breeze tousling his hair, the dew soaking into his tunic.

Green called to him from… somewhere. Vio looked up, and suddenly Green was squatting in front of him, brow furrowed in concern; his hair falls in front of his eyes, and Vio doesn’t think before he tucks it behind his brother’s ear. The pads of his fingers take in the textures they brush against-- Green’s wispy thin hair, his smooth skin, his soft feather earring --as if they’ve never felt anything before. The sheer sensory input sends a current through his bones, the nerves of his hand buzzing with input. He’s staring now, he knows it, and Green eyes, deep and glittering like emeralds, hold more concern than ever. Vio glances down to see Green’s hand outstretched in a wordless offer. He smiles, _grins,_ the smile he and his brothers share pulling at his face, demanding to be seen, and Vio takes the hand he’s been offered. Green pulls him to his feet and into his arms-- _just like Dot, just like Grandpa, just like Time --_ and the pressure of Green’s embrace is just what Vio needs, it’s firm and even and all-encompassing, and it anchors him. Vio’s world shrinks down to just this place, this person, this _hug_ , and, all at once, the vastness of the universe isn’t so overwhelming anymore.

Here, and now, this is all that matters.


End file.
